


we must get past all these rules

by donutworry



Category: The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternative Universe - FBI, Crimes & Criminals, Cyberpunk, F/M, Murder, Technology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-05-15 04:13:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14783400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutworry/pseuds/donutworry
Summary: Fallen from grace, SSI Bonnie Bennett has become obsessed with the ghost of Malachai “Kai” Parker, also known as the Gemini Reaper. After profiling and forming some strange understanding of the young, prodigious killer, her overconfidence lead to the deaths of both her partner Meredith Fell and an escaped Kai Parker. Now, over ten years later, a Gemini Reaper copycat has emerged and it’s up to Bonnie and Detective Matt Donovan to put the pieces together and figure out exactly who this copycat is before more fall victim to Kai Parker’s legacy. For bonkaiqueen.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AN1: This is bonkaiqueen’s all human FBI AU. Title from Troye Sivan’s “Touch”. Older Bonnie, younger Kai. Bonkai. Heavy Monnie. Set in the undisclosed future, because the tech - archives, records, etc. inspired by the Black Mirror episode “The Entire History of You”, the classic anime “Ghost in the Shell”, and Netflix’s movie “Anon” (and btw, aren’t you guys just living for this cyberpunk sci-fi revival in media? Cuz I am) - es muy importante for future plot points. Also this Ether thing really is sticking with me lol. Probably gonna be another slow-going WIP - I have a problem. Enjoy.
> 
> AN2: Thanks to shadowcatgirl09 for helping me plan this. If you guy like my stories, you should really be appreciative of Fee taking the time to be my soundboard. She’s a trooper.

 

 

* * *

 

_ “So, you never told me, Bonnie - can I call you Bonnie? Anyway, yeah, you never told me exactly what gave me away,” leaning forward, Kai’s orange jumpsuit stretches across his chest in a way it hadn’t six months before. The bracelets that keep the teenager cut off from the Ethernet blink green lights in the fluorescently lit interrogation room. Dark circles shadow his storm-blue eyes as he stares across the table at special agent Bennett. “So what was it, Bonnie?” _

_ The petite agent leans back into her chair, assessing the murderer in front of her and keeping her face blank. He watches her like prey and it’s unnerving. But she had caught him when no one else was able to, proof that the imprisoned man wasn’t nearly as infallible as he convinced himself he was. Ignoring his question, she spins the styrofoam coffee cup in her hand. _

_ “Why aren’t you sleeping well, Mr. Parker?” she asks instead. _

_ His semi-smirk fades and she can see the annoyance flicker over his face, briefly, before he shuts it away, his snake-charmer smile back in place. He has a nice smile, she’s willing to admit. There’s a lot about him that’s  _ **_nice._ ** _ He’s handsome and brilliant, funny and a talented musician and technophile, if a bit obnoxious and weird. Even Bonnie wasn’t immune to his particular brand of charm. _

_ But his outside appearance and demeanor hid a monster. If Bonnie hadn’t trusted her gut, Malachai Parker would have had her fooled too. As it was, she’d been able to link the young man to a string of murders around the DMV tri-state area because of her instincts. _

_ “You’re looking for that guy, right, Bonnie?” he queries, returning the rude gesture of answering a question with a question. “That Lolita-loving freak? Why not do him like you did me?” _

_ “Who says I'm not, Mr. Parker?” _

_ Pulling up a file from her archive, Bonnie shares it on the Ethernet-locked, safety-monitored comm-link she shares with the criminal before her. The browsers in his eyes lend his pupils a familiar, but eerie, silver glow and Agent Bennett watches him as he skims the images’ contents. His lips purse when he sees what she shared with him. _

_ “We already know that you and Mr. Salvatore - or ‘that Lolita-loving freak,’ whichever you prefer - had established an online correspondence. How do you think that will go at your trial, Mr. Parker? Not only did you kill over a dozen pairs of twins and mass murdered your family for occult worship -” _

_ “ _ **_Perceived_ ** _ occult worship,” Kai mutters. _

_ “- which is worse, because if there's no motive, you did all of this out of sheer cruelty,” Bonnie snaps. “You also encouraged another person to commit murder and offered to help hide the body. You may be very skilled at erasing and hacking your record, Mr. Parker, but you got sloppy and now…” Bonnie smirks. _

_ “We've got you. You may as well help us find Mr. Salvatore and possibly save Elena Gilbert - it would very well lend a judge reason to lighten your sentence.” _

_ Kai stares at her for a moment, then starts to laugh. _

_ “This isn't about catching Damon, is it? It's about the bodies. You just want to know where the rest of the twins are buried.” _

_ “Allowing the families of your victims a chance at closure is of interest, yes.” _

_ She pulls a record from her archive, the parents of one of the last pairs of male-female twins to fall victim to Kai’s obsession. The pair were one of many not found, Kai being nearly impeccable at hiding evidence - physical and digital alike. She sends it to him, so he can get a taste of the devastation he’d wreaked. Kai frowns at her impatiently. _

_ “I told you, the bodies were destroyed,” he grunts. _

_ “And I told you, I don't believe you,” she parries. _

_ Crossing her arms Bonnie raises an eyebrow at him. He mimics the expression, annoying asshat he is, but he's hooked. Bonnie has him curious, and Kai is not the kind of young man to ignore his curiosities. _

_ “But the bodies aren't the topic of discussion right now. Give us a location, Malachai. Where would Damon Salvatore take Elena Gilbert? And if his dumping ground happens to be near one of your own - well, I'm sure the DA could arrange for an amenable judge to be assigned to your case. I'm sure you know, but many of the less rehabilitation-focused judges are gunning to be the one to sentence you.” _

_ Bonnie can see something flicker in his gaze and she has to clench her jacket in a fist under her crossed arms to hide her excitement. She has him - she  _ **_has_ ** _ him. She just needs him to give it up. _

_ “You've only just turned eighteen, Mr. Parker. You spent your last birthday in prison - and I'm sure it wasn't pleasant. There are more accommodating places you know: rehabilitation centers, places with limited Ethernet access. If you don't want to spend the rest of your birthdays in a shithole like this…” She trails off to let it stew in his brain. Quietly, she adds. “All I need from you is a little cooperation.” _

_ His jaw clenched and the beauty mark on his neck bobs when he swallows. It really is unfair, how a man so twisted on the inside can be so devastatingly beautiful on the outside.They hold each other’s gazes, Bonnie’s heart pounding like a bass-driven pop song. A stare down between the criminal and the cop, until finally - finally! Bonnie internally cheers - the media-dubbed ‘Gemini Reaper’ nods in acquiescence. _

_ “There’s a spot near Virginia beach,” he says. “We talked about it once in an offline comm-link chat.” _

 

* * *

 

“Sorry I took so long, Agent Bennett,” Detective Matthew Donovan greets as she walks into his office. He grins, handing her a to-go cup, causing Bonnie to pause in confusion.

“I got you a vanilla bean and Irish cream latte with skim milk,” he says. Bonnie raises her eyebrows and he elaborates. “I took a peek at your public archive to figure out what you like. I wanted to thank you for meeting with me - and to get into your good graces,” he confesses with a chuckle.

She takes the offered coffee with a small, polite smile that she soon drops in favor of getting to the point.

“I took a peek at yours as well, Detective,” she says, taking a sip of the latte - it was perfect, much to her surprised delight. He rubs the back of his neck, his ears slightly red.

“I know I spend too much time at the local bar,” he says. “But there’s really no place else to hang out in Mystic Falls. I’m sure you remember.”

The small grin that comes to her face then is bit more genuine. She’d forgotten that she and the detective share a hometown - their respective jobs keep them away, although Bonnie had completely moved away while Donovan chose to do the two-hour commute to Richmond.

“Not your public archive, Detective Donovan,” she nods to the scarring on his body. “I took a peek at your private archive.”

He deflates slightly.

“I figured as much,” he sighs. “I hope you don’t mind, but I don’t exactly like talking about it.”

“Of course,” Bonnie turns her gaze out of the window behind him, not wishing to make him or herself uncomfortable. It was no fault of his own, but looking at the detective’s bad scarring made Bonnie feel sick to her stomach. “I only meant to imply that perhaps you and I would not be the best partnership for this case.”

She grimaces.

“A little personal for us both, don’t you think?”

“Maybe not personal enough for anyone else,” the detective counters softly. Bonnie looks at him in surprise. His eyes, one scarred up and the other smooth and beautiful, crinkle as he sends her a self-deprecating grin. His mercurial blue-grey pupils seem to shift to a darker shade as he continues.

“No one else really needs the closure.”

 

* * *

 

Bonnie is a great profiler. She knows this - she’s consulted damn near two hundred cases the past decade, drawn up nearly perfect profiles of the sickest minds, despite the smear on her reputation that was Malachai Parker. Discredited and demoted after that clusterfuck, she’d had to work her ass off to prove that she was still worth the investment the bureau had placed in her when selecting such a young cadet to become an agent. Almost every profile she had created - even Kai’s - lead to an arrest or identity exposure.

She’d gotten hasty with Malachai. A little too cocky and a little too eager to prove herself on one of her first big cases. She’d overestimated herself and underestimated him, a stupid,  _ stupid _ thing to have done when she understood, almost better than anyone else, exactly how ingenious and outright devious the young man was.

Kai Parker, after his death, became a bit of a white whale for her. She was always chasing his ghost, in every case she worked after him, determined to let no one else evade justice the same way he had. It was redemption and revenge, exacted on criminals who hadn’t exactly committed the crime she caught them for.

Indulging her pride was likely her greatest sin.

 

* * *

 

After meeting Detective Donovan at his office (“Please, just call me Matt,” he had laughed. “We’re pretty much neighbors, anyway”) Bonnie had followed him back to Mystic Falls, her car trailing behind his car on a route that came back to her like an old habit. They agreed to work dinner at The Grill, the restaurant-bar that Matt spent a lot of his downtime playing pool at. Bonnie had spent a lot of time in high school there herself - Matt’s older sister, Vicki, used to work there and she would sneak Bonnie extra cherries in her Cokes when the manager wasn’t looking.

The thought of Vicki Donovan makes Bonnie flinch. Vicki, who had been so nice despite her self-destructive behavior, who took care of her younger brother in favor of taking care of herself, hadn’t deserved to die the way she had. Bonnie had done more than peek at Matt’s full archive: she had outright perused it for hours, seeking clues on Kai’s escape and she’d seen what Matt had seen, watched his sister die the same way he had at the brutally efficient hands of the Gemini Reaper. She wonders if he ever replays the records - Bonnie had been on the verge of abusing her authority to access people’s private archives to view Matt’s records of his run-in with Kai Parker.

It both fascinated and sickened her, how obsessive she became. It was less about the victim’s pain and more about catching that white whale, and Bonnie had to redesign her thinking in order to shift her focus back to where it should be.

Helping the  _ victims. _

Working with Detective Donovan is a particularly surreal experience for Bonnie. Not only did the younger officer share a hometown with her, he stood as a living, breathing testament to her failure. If she hadn’t fucked up so badly with Parker, his sister would still be alive, and Matt wouldn’t be so disfigured.

It was why looking him made her feel sick.

Because Matt Donovan wasn’t just a victim of Kai Parker’s boundless derangement. He was a victim of Bonnie Bennett’s pride too.

So yeah, looking at him was a sickening reminder of why she does what she does.

 

* * *

 

“So, these recent murders are a perfect recreation of what the Gemini Reaper did,” Matt says over the encrypted and classified private comm-link they share - having civilians catch a whiff of this case was a major no-no. Outside of it, she watches him take a bit of his burger and say something about not enough avocado. The silver glow of active browsers light up his eyes, and it’s an extra creepy sight when half his face is burn-scarred. But Bonnie’s sure hers look similarly off-putting as they share go over files on comm-link together.

“Kidnapping the victim in the daytime, in a public area without leaving a trace on anyone’s record. Disposing of the body completely and being blocked out of the victims’ records entirely upon an Ethernet archive review. No traces of a hack or tampering, suggesting a high level of cybersecurity understanding,” Matt continues as they watch the final moments Greta Martin before the copycat ends her life. There is large blanks space of nothing in her view, a knife seemingly descending from the heavens to stab her multiple times and slit her throat before the record goes black with the words  **Record Discontinued** appearing. It’s a highly disconcerting sight.

“I went back to compare this with the records of Parker’s victims. The Buchanan twins,” Donovan throws that record onto the comm-link. Bonnie watches Muriel Buchanan’s record as, again, as if wielded by an invisible entity, a baseball bat beats Mitchell Buchanan, Muriel’s twin brother to death as Muriel screams for it to stop. The bat is then turned to Muriel before the record goes black.

Bonnie’s really come to hate the phrase “Record Discontinued” over the years.

“The Reyes twins,” and the record plays, this time from the male twin’s perspective as he watches his sister’s beheading via chainsaw before the same chainsaw is used to tear open is midsection. And again, it’s as if the weapon was floating around and acting of its own accord.

“The Changs,” a dual image record is played, the Chang twins each tied to a chair with a clear plastic bag duct taped closed around their heads. They’d watched each other asphyxiate while a pair of teasing, snipping scissors floated between them.

**Record Discontinued.**

Bonnie sighs and takes a bite of her white cheddar alfredo macaroni with cajun chicken and applewood-smoked bacon. It’s still as delicious as her memory implied it would be. Bonnie thinks it says a lot about her that she can watch several terror-filled final records in a row and still enjoy her dinner.

“The major difference between now and then is victim choice,” she provides over the comm-link.

“Kai had an obsession with male-female twins, stemming from his own preoccupation with his stillborn twin sister and the mosaic traces of her DNA in his cells - Kai was a partial chimera. He believed they ‘merged’ in utero and that he was the stronger twin for having survived and his high IQ, attractiveness, and talent for piano and computers no doubt fueled this belief. He hated his parents for their exploitation of his gifts however, and soon developed a paranoia that their continuous, uh...breeding was an attempt to replace him with a better child. His killing spree started shortly after his youngest siblings, a healthy pair of male-female twins, were born. He always went for male-female twins around his age.”

“He escalated when he realized you were on to him and killed his entire family by trapping them in the basement of his childhood home and starting a fire,” Matt finished for her. He grins and says out loud, “Been there - not exactly fun.”

A flash of guilt shoots through Bonnie. She pushes it aside to continue the review.

“His family died of smoke inhalation, and their bodies were found to be half-dissolved. Whatever Kai had used as an accelerant may have been some kind of highly combustible and corrosive substance. He was arrested and shortly before his trial escaped.”

Taking a deep breath, Bonnie looks at Matt solemnly. “I’m sorry for my part in what happened after that,” she says in a soft voice. “I’m sorry he escaped and I’m sorry for what happened to you and Vicki as a result.”

Matt stares at her in muted shock, seemingly both taken aback and unsurprised by her apology.

“Nothing to forgive,” he tells her. Over the comm-link, he says, “Seriously, don’t sweat it. I don’t blame you, I blame the psycho pretty boy. Let’s complete our review and go over our list of suspects. If you really feel bad, catching this copycat is the best way to help me get some peace.“

He takes her hands in both of his and Bonnie blinks at him. Her mouth feels suddenly dry and she wishes there was someone around who would refill her water. Gentle touch is a nearly foreign concept to her and Matt’s hands are warm and welcoming. They envelop her small digits completely. Almost absently, Bonnie finds herself tracing the smooth ridges of Matt’s scars with the pads of her fingertips. Ashamed, she stops herself, shooting him a sheepish smile. It falls away at his vulnerable and probing expression

“And you too, Bonnie. I think you deserve some peace of mind as well,” he murmurs, squeezing her hand before he releases her and retreats. Her fingers still tingle from where they touched.

Slipping back under the mask of professionalism, the vulnerable moment between them passes and the two detectives continue their case review over the comm-link.

 

* * *

 

“Dad?” Bonnie calls out, slipping inside her childhood home. Her father appears in the foyer quickly, a large grin on his face as he steps towards her and wraps her in a warm bear hug.

“Pumpkin!” he greets. “I missed you.” With a laugh, Bonnie pats his back.

“I missed you too, Dad,” she tells him. Releasing her, Rudy Hopkins leads his daughter to the kitchen, where he makes two cups of chamomile tea and the duo catch up with each other. It’s past midnight by the time her dad groans about being an old man in need of sleep. With a soft smile, Bonnie hugs her dad goodnight and insists she can do the dishes on her own as she shoos him to bed.

“I’m thirty-six and an FBI agent, Dad,” she laughs. “I can handle a couple of dirty mugs and a tea kettle.”

After putting the dishes away and getting ready for bed, Bonnie hunkers down and thinks of the day she had. Deciding to do a rewind, she replays her record of the case review, annotating and attaching notes to the file. The biggest difference was that the killer’s profile had shifted. Kai went after twins. The copycat’s favored victim was slender, pretty African American women. If it weren’t for the aspects of the crime that were exactly like the Gemini Reaper’s, she would have thought this killer was pursuing some sort of sexual release.

_ Or revenge, _ a rogue thought intrudes. Bonnie tries to ignore it. The sheer vanity that the new victim profile had anything to do with her filled Bonnie with self-disgust. Still, not willing to overlook any possibility, she adds the note to the file. 

She rewatches the moment that Matt had grasped her hands in his several times before pausing and adding an annotation.

**Warm,** she notes.  **Familiar.** After some hesitation, she also adds,  **I enjoyed the feeling.**

It would be just her luck, she muses to herself, to fall for the guy who shared her fixation with another man. How fucked up.

Finishing her rewind, Bonnie closes her eyes and tries to sleep. But as per usual, she gets a nagging sensation in the back of her skull that she can’t ignore. With a heavy exhale, Bonnie begins another rewind, replaying events from over ten years ago.

 

* * *

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

"Detective Donovan," Bonnie calls when Matt passes her borrowed office. She throws down the pen she'd been fiddling with as she looked over archive print-outs and waved to get his attention. The tall detective circles back around to answer her.

"Agent?" he replies in an amused tone. His blue eyes dart around the mess of pictures on the floor, a grimace briefly marring his half-scarred face when they land on the image of a burned corpse. "Did you need me for something?"

"I wanted to consult with you," Bonnie replies. "About -"

"That night?" he queries, pointing to Vicki Donovan's picture - the burned victim. Bonnie smiles sheepishly,

"I'm afraid a record can only say so much. It's far more objective, but a human has other senses that often don't get recorded by a browser in the same way."

"Sooo," he leans his shoulder against the doorway, arms crossing and Bonnie's mouth is suddenly dry when she observes the way his simple blue button-down tightens across his chest and arms when he does that. "You want to pick my brain?"

"If it's no trouble," she smiles.

Her voice pitches lower than intended, a sultry undertone to it that takes her by surprise. Either Matt didn't notice, or the scarred man was good at hiding his reaction because he said nothing about the flirtation. Considering what Bonnie knew of the man's competence at his job, she doubts the way she said that went unnoticed and felt grateful he decided to dismiss it.

The investigator walks into the room, gingerly picking his way over the collaged floor. He peers at it curiously and waves his hands over it, a question lining his entire body. Bonnie chuckles, understanding his confusion; he's not the first co-worker to be baffled by her methods.

"Sometimes it helps me to have physical copies and rearrange them myself," she says. "Especially when I get to dive into a case like this. My job as an investigator is to build up profiles and match suspects and motives to the crime using that profile - I spend so much time looking through archives and digitized evidence that good, old-fashioned detective work is a reprieve."

"You're mapping, right?" he inquires. At her nod, he smiles quizzically. "Why the added trouble then - can't you do that through the Net?"

Bonnie hesitates. "Yes, I can. But like I said, doing things digitally only does so much. Having the immersive memory helps, especially when I'm reviewing record annotations."

"You make annotations on your records?" Matt sounds shocked.

Quite honestly, Bonnie doesn't blame him. For most people, the records themselves are enough. A person can peruse their personal archive and replay a moment in perfect clarity, as many times as they want, to recreate the sensations of the moment. And share them over comm-links or post online in order to preserve it in the public cloud, a sort of immortality made up of ones and zeros. For someone like Bonnie, whose bread and butter was literally replaying multiple individual records of events to piece everything together to the bigger narrative picture, the base objectiveness of records was obligatory but banal. She liked the grit and subjectiveness of memories, sensations, and emotions - especially when it came to understanding the psyche of some of the people she went after. Her methods were mad but effective, so she shrugs in response to his surprise.

"Most of my archive is classified anyway," she tells him. "The vast majority of the data will self-destruct if I can't do my job or die - and by proxy, so will a lot of my personal records, simply because the algorithm will link them to cases. I can't share any of my archive publicly because of potential data leakage, so I'm not really worried about people getting an intimate look at my thoughts."

Matt nods appreciatively, a solemn expression on his face that soon melts to a playful smile.

"So I take it you're a bit of a sensationalist," he asks lowly. Squatting over her scattered pictures, he starts to rearrange them and she lets him, wondering if he'll do it in a way she hadn't thought to. Going through records all day gave the FBI agent an appreciation for differing perspectives.

"A bit," Bonnie confesses. "I like doing things for a rush far more than I should."

"What kind of things?"

The question makes Bonnie pause. It's not so much  _what_  he said as the  _way_  he said it and perhaps he hadn't been so unaffected by her accidental flirting. He peers up at her through dark lashes, his eyes an almost mercurial blue, and Bonnie's mouth goes dry again, once more noticing how much of a man the other investigator was.

She smiles.

"Aren't you a cop?" she asks teasingly. "I gotta leave you with some mystery."

 

* * *

 

Matt watches her set up a camera in the interrogation room and looks around them.

"Haven't been on this side of the table in a few years," he says with a strange smile. Like a mix of a pained grimace and a self-deprecating grin. "Brings back memories."

Bonnie pauses with the camera.

"Are you okay? If this is triggering, we can move or -"

"No, I'm fine," Matt assures. "It's just odd. Besides, I suppose me having these feelings might make it easier to recall the events from that night."

Watching him carefully, Bonnie nods before finishing up with the camera and taking her seat.

"Okay," she starts. "Before you were at the barn, what were you doing?"

"I was with Vicki."

"Were you coming from somewhere or going somewhere?"

"Both. I picked her up from The Grill and we were on our way home."

"Do you recall what you were talking about?"

"We were arguing. About my mom and about...some of Vicki's choices."

"What choices?" Matt goes still after that question, looking off in the distance. He sighs, then answers.

"Her drug use. Her reputation with men. It seems so stupid now, but I was worried about how her sleeping around was affecting us. I kept comparing her to mom and made her angry."

"Comparing her how?" Bonnie prods.

"Basically slut-shaming her," he replies. "Telling her how if she didn't stop, she'd be exactly like Kelly with two kids who hated her. Harsh, right?"

"Harsh," Bonnie agrees. "Would you say you were angry?"

"Yes," the detective answers. "I was angry."

Bonnie ceases her questioning for a moment so he can gather himself together.

"Are you okay to continue?" she finally queries. Matt nods. "Outloud, please."

"I can continue," Matt says.

"How did you end up at the barn?"

"Vicky wanted me to take her there. She said she was meeting up with someone at a party. I was just going to drop her off and leave, but when we showed up, it was dark and quiet. Nobody was there. I thought maybe she got the wrong place or time, but she insisted on going out and looking for whoever she was supposed to meet.

"I was uncomfortable leaving her there, so I got out to look with her," he stops talking then, his eyes distant.

"What happened next, detective?" Bonnie hedges.

"Something hit me. In the head, hard. I saw stars, literally. I must have blacked out, but it was weird because I was aware of what was going. I remember hearing Vicki scream and a man's voice telling her to shut up. The next thing I know, I'm tied to a post in the barn next to Vicki. It was like no time passed at all, but it didn't seem like I passed out."

"In your record, there's a visual and audio gap regarding a third person with you and Vicki. Can you describe the person who attacked you?"

"He was a tall man, around my height. Caucasian, dark hair, blue eyes, conventionally handsome, kind of skinny. Raving. When I was fully conscious, he was saying something about Vicki and I not being twins, but having the same birthday a year apart should be good enough. He sounded crazy - it was like he was talking about human sacrifice."

"You and Vicki share a birthday?"

"Yes. We're exactly one year apart. Irish twins, so they say."

"Did he say anything else to make you think he was talking about human sacrifice or was human sacrifice something you inferred?" Bonnie presses. Matt pauses to think.

"I inferred it. But what else could he have meant? I didn't know at the time that he was obsessed with twins and twin imagery. I thought he was some sort of crazy Satanist."

Bonnie nods and annotates her records. She gets back on track of her line of questioning.

"Can you tell me what he was wearing? Did he look tired or manic? Was he clean shaven or scruffy? I know these things may seem asinine, but it will give me insight into his headspace at the time," Bonnie explains and Matt nods.

"I understand," he says. "He had on a dark green sweatshirt, jeans, and a grey and white baseball cap. He looked like he hadn't shaved in maybe a day or so, but it wasn't sloppy or anything. More like a fashion choice - actually, he looked really well-groomed. His shoes weren't even scruffed up. I remember because I was staring at them trying to see if they'd be good running shoes if we escaped - he had on Doc Martens. I remember thinking 'who even wears those?' He didn't seem tired, but he might have been manic - like I said, he was raving about twins, and Vicki and I not fitting a pattern, so my first thought was that he was a nut."

"Did he say or do anything in particular that stood out to you?"

"No, not really. I wasn't actually paying attention to his words, because I was - wait," Matt sits up. "Actually, yeah, he did say something weird. He said 'will she accept this gift?' I'm certain that's when I started thinking about Satanism and human sacrifice. The phrasing was just too weird."

"Gift? That's the exact word he used?"

Matt nodded. "Exactly. And he did say 'she' not 'he.' I was confused by the phrasing, but not the words used."

Bonnie notes it.

"What happened after you woke up?"

"Vicki was begging him to let us go. When she saw I was awake, she started asking if I was okay. Kai told her to shut up and Vicki told him to fuck himself. That's when he threw gasoline on her."

Bonnie remembers that from Vicki's final record. It was eerie, hearing her yell and respond to seemingly nothing and then seeing gasoline and finally a match being thrown in her direction. Kai's gift for hacking erased him completely from others' records, so Matt's testimony is a godsend at filling in the blanks. Of course, he'd been questioned before, but at the time, Bonnie had been removed from the investigation on suspension. Besides, she'd always preferred to do things herself.

"Did he say anything when he did that?"

"He said, 'careful, junkie.'"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Bonnie notes that as well. It's likely that Kai perused their records upon hacking and saw Vicki Donovan's heavy substance use. The other possibility is that he specifically targeted them and might have been observing them for some time.

Both are within the realm of possibility and Kai's abilities. However, Bonnie suspects that Kai may have been stalking the siblings. The set up at the barn was too convenient, Vicki needing to meet someone there at a party that hadn't been going on - or was never planned. There weren't very many sets of twins in Mystic Falls, and none of them were male-female. As far as fitting Kai's victim profile, Matt and Vicki came closest.

Her concern was discerning why Kai came to Mystic Falls in the first place.

"Before that night at the barn, had you noticed anything unusual?" she inquires.

"Unusual how?"

"Well, MF is a small town. Were there any cars you didn't recognize continuously showing up at places you and your sister frequented? Did it seem like you were being watched? Did you notice things missing or being moved from where you last remembered them being? Did it ever feel like your archive firewalls were being prodded?"

"You think he stalked us?"

"I think it's a possibility."

Matt shakes his head. "If he was, I didn't notice. I never picked up on any of those things, but stuff like misplaced keys wasn't exactly a priority then. I was worried about other things."

"Things like what?"

"Vicki. Bills. My mom was gone and finances were tight."

"Your mother was gone."

"Yeah. My mom was...flighty, at best. Negligent, if we're being brutally honest. It got worse the older Vicki and I got. She tended to forget to pay bills and buy groceries and sometimes she'd be gone for months at a time with some fling or other. I'm sure you remember."

She did, but she didn't want to interject with any of her own musings or biases. Pushing past that, Bonnie continues.

"How long had your mother been absent when you and Vicki met Kai at the barn?"

"About four months then."

"Had she contacted you at all?"

"Yeah, she always did. Contact stopped a few weeks before the fire, though. I'm not sure how long," Matt stops and stares at Bonnie. "You think he targeted us."

"I don't know."

"But you  _think_  he did."

"I can't say, detective." Bonnie implores and Matt nods.

"I found out my mom had died in a car accident when I woke up from my coma," Matt informs her. "She died before the fire and her wallet wasn't with her, so she was listed as a Jane Doe until dental records came in. I try not to think about all this, but I thought the attack was about you, not about his-," Matt's eyes widen when he realizes what he said. Guilt and hurt sluice through Bonnie, but she can't blame him for what he thought. There was a good reason to believe it.

"I'm so sorry," he says. "I wasn't thinking! I don't blame you, I just knew that he was..."

Bonnie nods. "Yeah. He came to my hometown for his final attack. Trust me, everyone thinks it was about me, even if we can't confirm or deny it."

"Still, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to sound like that." He smiles apologetically, and Bonnie sends a tremulous one back to him.

"Let's call it for today, yeah? I think we could both use a break. We can pick up tomorrow."

 

* * *

 

" _You think it's the miracle son?" Meredith asks in surprise. Bonnie rolls her eyes at the nickname and dips her eggroll in the sweet-and-sour sauce._

" _Yeah," she says through a full mouth._

_She and her partner both have the night off and opted to hang out to watch Netflix and eat bad-decision Chinese takeaway. Meredith is fun to hang out with and someone Bonnie kind of idolizes. The older agent had taken her smoothly under her wings when Bonnie joined the Bureau, and soon the duo had formed an incredibly close student-mentor bond._

_Bonnie is forever grateful that someone as amazing as Agent Sulez-Fell thought a greenhorn like Bonnie was worth taking on as a partner._

" _Why? He was only ever a potential witness, he was never considered suspect."_

" _Just a gut feeling," Bonnie replies. "I know 'gut feeling' won't hold up in court, but something wasn't right about him."_

_Meredith snorts._

" _You're just saying that because you're uncomfortable a minor hit on you."_

_Bonnie scowls at the reminder._

" _That's not why. Something was just off. He was a little too perfect and accommodating. And he's seventeen? What kind of seventeen-year-old doesn't get into_ _ **any**_   _shenanigans he'd be worried about cops finding out about? Like drugs or underage drinking? He offered up his archive like it was nothing."_

" _He's a good kid, Bon. All he does is study and practice, which I would think is all he'd have time to do. People compare his musicality to the likes of Beethoven and his mathematician skills to Pythagoras. You know he coded the Honoria app based on the Symphony number 9?"_

_Yes, Bonnie thinks. I do know. I saw his archive too._

_With a shrug, Bonnie counters. "I'm not saying he's not a great pianist or a smart kid. Clearly, if he can figure out how to turn complex astrophysics equations into mathematically solid music compositions and vice versa, he deserves all of his accolades. Kid's smarter than I could ever dream of being. But nothing at all to hide? His parents are supposedly very strict and he travels without them sometimes for his performances; you mean to tell me he's_ _ **never**_   _done anything wild when he was away from their supervision?"_

_Meredith nods. "Okay, I can see how his forthcomingness might seem weird to you. But like you said - the kid has strict parents. Maybe they strict-parented him into being decently behaved."_

" _I don't know. In my experience, overly strict parents make for sneaky, lying kids."_

" _Okay, pull up the record of the interview," Meredith says. "We'll review it. Show me the things that made you suspicious."_

_Bonnie sets up a comm-link and does just that. She skips through some parts, mainly Kai's outrageous flirting. When they went to see him, he practically ignored Meredith and stood way closer to Bonnie than he should have before they got him set up in the interrogation room._

" _All I see is a scrawny, horny kid with good tastes," Meredith teases. Bonnie mutters under her breath._

" _Okay! Look here. Watch his hands. You asked him if he had seen anything odd while he was D.C. - he starts to trace the Gemini symbol on the table midway through the question, but denied seeing anything."_

" _Bonnie," Meredith sounds disapproving. The younger agent ignores it. She knows this all speculative, evanescent 'proof' at best. But Kai had had all of these little...quirks. Bonnie found them as charming as she did disturbing. She didn't trust him at all._

" _Look, I know," she mutters to Meredith's questioning gaze once she finishes going through all of Kai's mannerisms that left her unnerved. Meredith had commented on how impressively detail-oriented Bonnie was but was otherwise unmoved. "I know this seems like I'm talking myself into believing something that isn't there. Maybe smug and knowing is the default setting for child prodigies - I don't know. I do know better cases than mine have been solved by detectives listening to their gut. What my instincts are telling me is that he's our killer - we just gotta figure out the 'how' or 'why' to pin him."_

_Meredith stared at her. Their take-out is long forgotten and the older agent's unwavering gaze makes Bonnie fidget finally Meredith nods._

" _Alright," she concedes. "Investigate him - quietly. I'll be your anchor. If I feel like you're going too far over the edge or that you're looking for a way to prove something that isn't true, I'll pull you out."_

_Bonnie smiles at Meredith's faith in her and nods. She wasn't wrong - all she needed was a chance to prove it._

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN1: Some terms.
> 
> Browser - physical device painlessly inserted in the hippocampus of infants, makes 'roots' in other areas of the brain, causes a light behind the eyes when actively in use for comm-links and Ethernet diving
> 
> Ethernet - software supporting browsers, stores the records in the archive; can be online or offline and agencies like the FBI have their own heavily secured intranets.
> 
> Records - daily recordings of an individual's life done by the browsers, typically only audio-visual
> 
> Archives - stored daily records of an individual's life
> 
> Comm-link - short for communication link, it's a private chat created between two or more individuals on the Ethernet; online over a great distance, offline if individuals are in close proximity
> 
> AN2: I'm not going to spend a lot of time on Kai's past arrest since the story is about the copy-cat. But have faith, oh ye skeptics, for this is a bonkai story. But the flashbacks are more to showcase Bonnie's evolution - she's much more cautious as a veteran investigator than she was when she was an up-and-coming rooking.
> 
> AN3: lol some of y'all really don't like monnie, do ya? But like I said - bonkai story.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN1: TW for graphic violence, adultery mention, violent sexual imagery, and Monnie bonding (I know, boo hoo. Remember who my OTP is).

 

 

* * *

 

They each receive the message through their browsers at the same time: **Crime scene, Dispatch 421.**

Matt heaves a breath. “Duty calls,” he murmurs. He waves his keys. “I can drive.”

Bonnie is secretly grateful to be called out for a crime scene - the guilt at stirring up horrible memories for Matt eats at her, coupling with the guilt of being the reason behind the memories in the first place. Looking at a dead body seems almost therapeutic in comparison to dealing with her culpability.

After slipping into the car, Bonnie quietly observes the tense way Matt holds the wheel before casting her gaze out the window. Her fault. His scarring, Vicki’s death, Meredith’s death, even Kai’s death - all because of her. Inhaling deeply, Bonnie closes her eyes and renews her vow to herself about catching the copycat. No longer would the ghost of the Gemini Reaper haunt her. She won’t let Parker have that sort of power.

When they arrive at the strip mall, CSI has already cordoned off the parking area behind the stores with yellow caution tape and a few mean-looking beat cops. Bonnie can see one of MFPD’s other detectives, Aaron Whitmore, questioning a distraught woman. Opening her comm-link with Matt, she requests to bridge Detective Whitmore in. When he accepts her request, she and Matt rifle through the record he sends them back.

The woman he’s talking to is Vanessa Wilkinson. Like most people who discover dead bodies, she was a jogger, out for a mid-morning run with her dog, Pixie, when the dog suddenly took off - unusually disobedient behavior for the canine. Wilkinson followed after her and Pixie lead her behind the furniture boutique where they found the body of a young African American woman that had been mutilated. CSI had ID’ed the body as a woman named Tessa Garza, the owner of the strip mall they were standing behind.

Bonnie grimaces at Whitmore’s record of Garza’s body.

“Jesus,” Matt mutters and Bonnie has to agree. She sighs.

“Let’s go look at her,” she murmurs and leads the way over to Tessa’s resting place.

In the United States, archive accessibility laws were incredibly strict. The number of investigators with the authority to access other people’s archives - even dead people’s -  without a warrant or autonomous permission is limited to senior police department officers and ranking federal agents. The limitation was a means of protecting personal privacy and record sharing was often controlled by what a person _wanted_ to share. Complete access wasn’t even granted to a child’s parents or guardians while the child was alive; parent-guardians only had complete access to their minors’ archive if, god forbid, the child passed away before the age of sixteen. Laws concerning incontinent adults were even more complex, but all laws regarding third party access to an individual’s archives boiled down to this: access was limited. And because archives are hard to tamper with and are stored in the Ethernet forever, a person’s will can be rendered somewhat immortal. Most individuals over the age of sixteen had active wills that granted a few family members and close friends access to their archives if they died. Anyone not on that will or with the right authorization was blocked.

It was why hackers were highly detested - why people like Kai Parker were so dangerous. Kai had the ability to tear down the walls protecting archives, to see the constantly changing algorithms and manipulate them to his liking. He could lay everyone around him bare without batting an eyelash or breaking a sweat when he had unlimited Ethernet access.

As an investigator, Bonnie had so exemptions concerning archive access. When Bonnie first started as an SSA, her accessibility had been capped by Meredith’s seniority. Now that she was the ranking officer and lead investigator, everyone else’s access was capped by her and a few other chief officers.

Meaning she was the only person at the crime scene who could harvest Tessa’s record archive.

Approaching the body with Matt in tow, Bonnie grimaces at the state the copycat left poor Tessa in. Kai had never been afraid of getting hands-on and messy with the twins he murdered and his copycat was the same way with their victims.

Tessa Garza had been disgustingly mutilated: her jaw hung unnaturally low in a permanent scream. Her tongue was missing, but her empty, gaping mouth wasn’t nearly so disturbing as the empty gaping holes of her eye sockets. Tessa’s eyes had been gouged out, leaving behind red-rimmed holes that flies buzzed in and out off. Her ears, like her tongue and eyes, were also missing, as was the skin on both of her hands, from fingertips up to her elbows. It exposed the bone and tissue beneath like some sort of macabre fashion statement. Her neck has heavily bloodied, and even though Bonnie couldn’t see a wound through all the gore, she’d place money that the woman’s neck had some sort of slice through it

She was positioned so that her skinned hands framed her cheeks. She reminded Bonnie of something and the agent does a quick image search. A few images pop up like an accordion and she rifles through them quickly.

**_The Scream, Edvard Munch_ ** her search tells her and she selects the image of the painting, layering it over the sight of Tessa’s body. It matches almost comically well, sending a shiver down Bonnie’s spine.

_“Do you like art, Agent Bennett?”_

“Monk?” Matt’s voice interrupts her reverie, causing Bonnie’s eyes to dart up to him in surprise. The tall detective is crouched next to her, closer than Bonnie expected. “What about a monk?”

“Wha -? Oh, _Munch._ Edvard Munch. He was -”

“A turn-of-the-century Expressionist artist. Right,” Matt’s browser lit eyes look fearsome as he frowns down at the body. “His most famous series was _The Scream._ ” He looks at her in awe as the glow flicks off.

“That was a quick connection. Parker was an art nerd, wasn’t he?” he grimaces at Tessa. “I was just thinking about _Home Alone._ ”

“He was just a nerd in general,” Bonnie mutters, half her mind far away from this particular crime scene. “Psychopathic, but brilliant. When I was interrogating him, he’d always drop some random tidbit of information that I had to look up.” She smiles at Matt.

“ _Home Alone_ was my favorite Christmas moving growing up. That and _Santa Claus._ ”

“Tim Allen or Dudley Moore?”

“Allen, of course. I’m not _that_ old.”

Matt grins at her and stands. His smile fades as he looks over their victim.

“You ready?” he asks. Bonnie sighs and rises as well.

“Yeah,” squaring her shoulders, she links up to Tessa’s browser, harvesting the woman’s archive and then opens the comm-link with Matt and Detective Whitmore. “Let’s dive.”

 

* * *

 

_It was late. So late it was actually early, with the sun creeping up over the horizon. In any case, it was way later than she intended to stay, but her other option was returning home to her fiance, Silas, and the toxic mess their once loving relationship had become. She bites back the fury and humiliation she feels whenever she thinks of her unfaithful paramour._

He _was the cheater and she was the crazy bitch for being upset at him._

_No, it was best she stayed away for now, otherwise, she’ll end up on the local evening news._

_Tessa sighs heavily, shuffling through the financial reports for the strip. All of the shops were doing well, but that was expected: Mystic Falls was a small town with a big city complex. The strip had two clothing stores (one of which, Shona Boutique, was the store she owned first that enabled her to buy up the rest of the strip - the place would forever be her baby), a Chinese restaurant, a home interior store, and tattoo parlour, all of which easily made rent and profits for Tessa. She had enough to buy up the strip mall across the street that she had been eyeing for a while. It had a popular nail salon, a cafe, and The Mystic Grill, plus the owner was some old lady named Ms. Flowers who had no next of kin for inheritance - the other shopping strip was ripe for the taking._

_Glancing at the clock once more, Tessa decides that financial domination is a task for tomorrow, when Shona was open and she actually had to be here. She was tired, and she would be damned if Silas’ idiotic ass was keeping her away from her silk-sheeted Serta. Turning the light off in her office in Shona, Tessa decides to take out the trash before closing up for the night. She’s fumbling to prop open the back door when she hears a noise and pauses, turning around to survey the parking lot. It was empty aside from her car. Even though the sun was starting to brighten the sky, the lot was still well-lit by bright and evenly spaced street lamps._

_A large opossum scurries across the back of the lot and Tessa pulls a face, making a mental note to call animal control after her nap. Wild rodents meant diseases, and she’d be damned if some ugly oversized rat passed on its rabies to her customers. With this in mind, she heads to the dumpster, making sure the pepper spray on her keychain is ready at hand, just in case. She’s eager to leave now, already imagining her head falling onto cool silk and plush down pillows. When the echo of the trash hitting the bottom of the empty bin fades, Tessa hears another sound and does another quick scan, her rate picking up as she opts to hurry towards the ajar door._

**_ERROR: Record Corrupted._ **

_Duck and lock, she thinks when something snarls in her long hair and she desperately raises her pepper spray again. It gets knocked out of her hand. There’s a sickening crunch and she lets out another cry, this one made of pain, and stumbles, her knee bent at an awkward angle. The hand in hair tightens, yanking her head back. She sees a glint of flashing metal. Fueled by fear, Tessa yanks her head forward at an angle, ripping hair from her scalp, and sinks her teeth into soft flesh. There’s another curse in a deep, angry voice. The back of her head hurts from where she now probably has a bald spot and her vanity makes her tear up, because fuck she’ll be grateful to ever have another chance to appreciate her own beauty._

_A heavy blow lands against her cheek, her attacker striking her face with his now free hand. Another one, and then he’s slipping his fingers between her lips, curling those fingers over her upper teeth. The other hand, the one she’s biting, grips her bottom jaw and Tessa’s eyes widen when the man starts pulling. She tightens her bite, but he’s too strong. Tears sting her cheeks as he pulls and a whining animalistic sound fills the air, a sound Tessa knows comes from her._

_The man grunts and there’s a wet crunch and searing pain shooting through her face and Tessa sobs, her mouth hanging slack._

_She doesn’t understand and tries to ask the man why he’s doing this to her? What had she done? Why did she deserve this?_

_He flips her over onto her back and straddles her. Tessa pushes at his chest weakly, but he bats her hands aside. There’s a flash of metal in his hand._

_“Please,” Tessa tries to say. It comes out as a strangled gurgle. She tries to find her keychain through her crying, scrambling for something, anything to defend herself. “Please let me go.”_

_Her attacker says something in response, but his voice sounds muffled, like her head is underwater or he’s speaking to her from another room. Nevertheless, his words cause panic to ensue in her chest._

_She thinks about her asshole fiance, about their twisted games and power plays, how his infidelity was always a cruel measure to get under her skin and pull her attention towards him. She’s sure he’ll fall apart without her to challenge him and a part of her feels sorry for him. Silas doesn’t know who he is without Tessa._

_Mostly though, Tessa feels fear. It overwhelms her when her attacker’s knife glints closer to her face, pierces her flesh with its jagged edge as he - oh, god not even her_ corpse _will be pretty, she’ll have to be a closed casket. Her screams ravage her own ears and Tessa hopes they haunt this man to his fucking grave. She can’t see anything anymore, but she doesn’t need to see to know her beauty has been ravaged. She doesn’t want to._

_Her tears sting the open wounds. It surprises her that she can still cry. Her heart pounds wildly and her fists slam against the attacker. She’s screaming at him, wordless animal wails. This torture...she’d never done anything to deserve this. She’s not the nicest person, but god she knows she didn’t deserve this._

_His hand pries into her useless mouth, gripping her tongue and holding it out. The fight inside her dies. Things are so distant now - it doesn’t even hurt anymore. It’s just numb. There’s a fleeting moment when she feels outside of herself, as if it isn’t even her who is being mutilated, like she’s just some spectating ghost. In that moment, she mourns herself._

**_Record Discontinued._ **

 

* * *

 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Whitmore breathes. The detective’s already pale skin seems pallid now, ghostly white and clammy. “He did that while she was _alive?_ ”

The stern-faced man looks both horrified and apoplectic. Bonnie’s sure that he’ll be on the copycat like a bloodhound from now on and she braces herself for dealing with the brusque man in the future. Matt is quiet, face downcast and unreadable.

Bonnie sighs. The recording was unnerving, and the corruption of the file even more so - records rarely ever get corrupted. Tessa’s record had an intense impression that her attacker was a large male, even though his actual figure and speech was so unnervingly absent from the record and there was a gap in it.

“Bag her,” she commands CSI and stands, facing the other two detectives. “Let’s recon and regroup. Detective Whitmore, see if you and your partner can find out anything from the other shop owners and Ms. Flowers. Tessa was financially ambitious - maybe she stepped on some toes. Also dig around the area - she was murdered this morning, maybe some early bird saw or heard something that might be a clue. Give me a call if you find anything or get back to the station before we do. Donovan and I are going to check out the fiance and his mistress, see if any foul play was involved.”

Whitmore stares at her incredulously. “You don’t think it was the copycat?” he questions.

“I just want to check all our boxes instead of jumping to the most obvious solution. That’s lazy investigative work and I want to make sure we get the right guy.”

Detective Whitmore nods, face solemn, and turns away. Bonnie glances at Matt.

“Still driving?” she inquires. He nods and they go to the car.

Instead of driving, Matt pulls up the coordinates of Silas Davenport’s listed address and sets the car on autopilot. Bonnie frowns at him in confusion.

“I could have done that.”

“I want to review the record again,” he explains. “And some others. Rather not die trying to do work.”

Bonnie nods slowly. “Oh-kay,” she drawls. “What exactly do you want to review?”

“Malachai Parker.” A bad feeling sweeps through Bonnie at his answer.

“Why?”

“It’s just...this is weird, right? You knew Kai best and he started to obsess over you because you caught him, but this copycat - and you know this one is the copycat, you’re just paranoid. Anyway ...did he have a partner? Or a friend, a lover, a family member he was particularly close to? Someone who would know the depths of his fixation on you?”

“Not...really,” Bonnie frowns. “Kai had a lot of ‘friends’,” she uses her fingers to quote the last word. “But all of his relationships were very shallow. People found him funny, charming, smart - but no one knew stuff like his favorite color, favorite food, what he did for fun,” she grimaces at that. She knows what Kai did for fun.

“So basically, no. No friends, no lovers, no jealous exes, nothing?”

“No,” Bonnie sighs. A particularly vivid memory pops up, one of Kai describing a rather deviant sexual fantasy about her. He’d been trying to piss her off at the time and Bonnie is ashamed to admit it got under her skin. “Kai didn’t have any relationships like that. He once confessed that he never really had sexual urges until… doesn’t matter.”

“It does,” Matt insists. He pulls up three records over their comm-link. “Watch this record again. And the ones from Greta Martin and Sarah Wilson. The twin murders were all very brutal, but non-sexual. The ones with Greta, Sarah, and Tessa - they’re all kind of sexual assault-ish.”

“What do you mean?”

“They were all stabbed. Stabbings, especially multiple stabbings against female victims, is often sexually driven, right?”

“Right,” Bonnie agrees, looking out the window. The side-by-side record playbacks overlay the changing scenery and she feels nauseous. She can’t tell if it’s motion sickness or disgust. “So you think these murders may be substitution for sex,” she murmurs. It’s unnerving to hear her worst fear concluded by someone else.

“Well, I think the ‘maybe’ should be a ‘definitely’. None of the twins were stabbed, not like this. When blades were used, it was shit like chainsaw beheadings or machete chopping. With Greta, she was stabbed multiple times, then had her neck slashed. The copycat hung Sarah Salvatore up in a hall of mirrors and made her watch as her body was used as fucking target practice and looked like a pin cushion. Then Tessa was…” he trails off.

“All very penetrative,” Bonnie concludes softly. “So you think our copycat is impotent?”

“Or living out a fantasy. Maybe not his own, but definitely Kai’s.”

Bonnie blanches. “Kai’s murders weren’t sexual.”

“No, they were narcissistic,” Matt agrees. He sighs and turns to stare at her. “You’re really going to make me say it?”

“You think Kai wanted to fuck me. He did, everyone knows he did, he didn’t exactly hide it,” Bonnie snaps. Matt holds up his hands in surrender, a chagrined smile on his face.

“I think this copycat is killing women who look like you, living out a fantasy for Kai,” he says softly. “Tessa was staged to look like art and I bet if we review Greta and Sarah’s discovery sites, we’ll find more creepy art shit Kai was into. It’s something to think about, Bonnie.”

_“Do you like art, Agent Bennett?”_ The question echoes in her head again. What had she replied?

The car pulls itself to a stop in front of sprawling, gated estate. Matt lets out an irritated sigh as they look at it. Bonnie raises her brow at him.

“I just...really, really hate rich people,” he explains. Bonnie snorts in response.

 

* * *

 

_Kai’s not looking at her and Bonnie sorely tempted to snap at him. This visit was on his request after all, but it seemed like all he wants to do is waste her time when she could be out - well, not working, but anything other than staring at his stupid side-profile._

_“Do you like art, Agent Bennett?” he inquires softly._

_It’s the first thing he’s said in ten minutes and he still doesn’t bother to look at her. They’re not in an interrogation room or the visiting center today: Kai’s been a well-behaved boy and earned himself free time, which he chose to spend in the library. His trial is tomorrow and he requested to see her during his free time. So here they are. In a prison library. Kai spent the first third of his hour flipping through a book rather than addressing her and she’s ready to scream._

_She shrugs flippantly. “I guess. Graphic design is important and that’s a type of art. I don’t really spend time thinking about other types of art.”_

_He pulls a face at that and finally looks at her, closing the book in his lap._

_“Are you upset with me, Agent Bennett?” he studies her face, which Bonnie tries to keep impassive, but he must read her irritation anyway because he grins. “You are. Is it about Agent Sulez-Fell? That’s not my fault.”_

_“You knew about the bunkard,” she grits._

_“I know I’m smart, Boooon-nee,” he drags her name out obnoxiously. “But I’m not omniscient. You can’t say I knew that Salvatore would booby trap the entire thing.”_

_Bonnie scoffs and rolls her eyes at him._

_“But you did know, didn’t you? You knew how he felt about Elena Gilbert and you knew how the bunkard was laid out. Salvatore didn’t exactly seem like the type to sit and meticulously think through elaborate traps. He’s too...rash.”_

_Kai’s answering smirk is fleeting and she almost would have missed it if she wasn’t glaring at him._

_“You think I had a hand in that mess, Agent Bennett?”_

_“Doesn’t matter,” she mutters._

_“I guess not,” he replies. “We were talking about art, right?”_

**Author's Note:**

> AN3: Don’t spoil who the killer is if you piece it together.
> 
> AN4: Yes, the opening is a rewind that Bonnie is watching. Scenic rewinds (flashbacks, lol, I think I’m fancy) will be in italics.


End file.
